Farhadi and Fiction: When Reality Outruns the Script

Asghar Farhadi returns to Competition with Parallel Stories, a film that examines how we construct fictions to endure reality. The Iranian filmmaker portrays characters whose personal narratives clash with a world that, according to him, continues to dawn with news of new innocent victims. A reflection on the power of imagination in the face of everyday barbarism.

$Iranian filmmaker Asghar Farhadi standing before a cracked cinema screen, holding a torn script page while real war footage bleeds through the fracture, characters from his film frozen mid-gesture behind him, a child’s drawing of a dove pinned to a wooden editing table, editing software timeline showing overlapping narrative clips, cinematic photorealistic style, dim editing suite lit by monitor glow, dust particles floating in beams of light, emotional tension, ultra-detailed textures on fabric and paper, dramatic chiaroscuro lighting$

Technology as the stage for our parallel fictions 🎭

Farhadi uses precise technical resources to illustrate the duality between what is narrated and what is lived. Sequence shots that isolate characters in their digital bubbles, montages that alternate reality and fantasy with sharp cuts, and a use of ambient sound reminiscent of the background noise of social media. The staging reflects how modern tools amplify our stories but also distort them, creating layers of fiction that sometimes hide the truth.

Spoiler: reality still has no security patch 🛡️

While Farhadi tells us how imagination can save us, the real world insists on surpassing any horror script. The director laments that each morning there are new innocent victims, but at least we can console ourselves that, if all else fails, we can always write an alternative ending. Of course, let's not think about asking for a reboot of reality: we already saw how the previous one ended.